These brand new pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope are the most detailed images ever taken of the dwarf planet Pluto.

They show the colour and brightness changes that Pluto has gone through. Parts of Pluto have become a lot redder than they used to be, and the northern hemisphere has also got a lot brighter. Although it is not certain, experts think that this is because ice melts at one pole, and then refreezes at the opposite end of the planet.

Pluto lies further towards the edge of our solar system than any of the planets. We do not know very much about it, but that will change in 2015. Then, NASA's New Horizons probe will fly past Pluto and take much more detailed images. 

Hubble's original images of Pluto were only a few pixels wide. It took 20 computers four years to combine them all together to get these images of the whole of Pluto.

Image by NASA, ESA and M Buie (Southwest Research Institute)